Molding American
StyleTwo Midwesterners
Cast Stones  And Break Free From British Rule

by Nancy Drew

The Sullivan-inspired Pomona Oak
Planter (top) fresh from the mold. Peters and Ward (above left) also
offer neoclassical pieces, like this Georgian-style University
Urn (above right).

On misty mornings, if you squint
just right, Longshadow Gardens does a convincing impression of an English
country estate. And its owners, Charlotte Peters and Daniel Ward, decked
out in barn jackets and wellies, easily pass for gentry as they hike through
vivid green hills and woods dotted with stone troughs and urns.

Open your eyes wide, though, and
visions of Sussex vaporize. This is country all right, but its southern
Illinois's Little Egypt region, where the Mississippi meets the Ohio,
fried catfish rules, and the spring snake migration attracts spectators
the way the Chelsea Flower Show draws royals.

Here in the town of Pomona, on a
103-acre farm overlooking Shawnee National Forest, Peters and Ward practice
the old-world craft of dry-casting stone----with a new twist. Their Longshadow
Planters, inspired by Midwestern architectural traditions and native limestone
they're made from.

On this particular misty morning,
in a barn-cum-factory, artisans hand-pack a crumbly mixture containing
crushed limestone into fiberglass molds. One man, wooden mallet in hand,
sits inside a five-foot-wide mold that will take him all day to pack.

Sleek fiberglass aside, cast-stone
craft has changed little since it gained popularity in 18th-century Britain
as a less expensive alternative to carved stone. Today, poured concrete
is cheaper still (a Longshadow piece that runs $500 would cost half that
in concrete, ten times as much in carved stone), but cast stone is more
porous, so it can better withstand extreme temperatures.

Porous
cast stone does more than help planters survive freezing temperatures;
it also keeps plant roots cool and moist on hot, dry days. For the
pots above, Peters and Ward (a former curator of perennials at the
Chicago Botanic Garden) worked with local nurserywoman Merlien Wilder
to select short-rooted natives that are suited to containers. 1. The
Glencoe Planter, based on an early-1900's original from its
namesake Chicago suburb, holds Eupatorium Purpureum SSP. Maculatum
'Gateway', Cimicifuga 'Hillside Black Beauty', Athyrium
Filix Femina, Osmunda Regalis, Miscanthus Sinensis, and Amsonia
Tabernaemontana. 2.Cimicifuga "Hillside Black Beauty", Asarum
Canadense, and Adiantum Pedatum peer over the Egg-And-Berry
band of the Sullivan Planter (on a Cabinet Pedestal).3. Inspired
by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and his apprentice Walter Burley
Griffin, the Prairie Planter (on a Prairie Pedestal) holds
Sporobolus Heterolepis, Liatris Spicata, and Baptisia
Australis. 4. Substitute water, and the Glencoe Bowl becomes
a birdbath.

It was that durability that attracted
Peters and Ward to the material in the early 1990's, when they worked
as garden designers on Chicago's affluent but weather beaten North Shore.
Though the couple's clients could afford imported cast-stone ornaments
from Europe, the pieces----perfect for Norman farmhouses or Tudor manors----looked
silly near the ranch, craftsman, and prairie-style houses Peters and Ward
were often landscaping.

"No one," says Peters, "was making
low, wide American bowls," planters like the turn-of-the-century ones
she had seen in Evanston, the Chicago suburb where she and Ward were living
at the time. She asked a manufacturer in England to cast simpler designs,
but he declined. When Peters pursued the subject with a British friend,
he retorted, "We don't understand why Americans can't make their own."
That remark she says, "was an epiphany for us."

She and Ward set about mastering
the subtleties of reconstruction limestone in their garage and, in 1993
moved 370 miles south to their Permian farmstead, which provides enough
elbowroom for a team of pattern and mold makers, including recruits from
the sculpture department at nearby Southern Illinois University.

Today, Peters and Ward still produce
their earliest designs----a planter emblazoned with the branches o a native
oak, sharp geometric containers that pay homage to Frank Lloyd Wright,
bowls with egg-and-berry bands drawn from the work of Wright's mentor,
Chicago architect Louis Sullivan----in addition to a new line by Atlanta
garden designer Ryan Gainey. And, in response to a customer base that
includes other parts of the country where older architecture styles prevail,
they continue to offer a few neoclassical pieces.

When
a couple in Lake Bluff, Illinois, asked Peters and Ward to mend their
original arts and crafts planter, it led to the creation of the Lake
Bluff. Sited in a woodland, this one is home to non-native but
shade-loving Athyrium Niponicum var. Pictum, Astilbe Arendsii,
and A. Chinensis var. Pumila.

As a result of all of this expansion,
Peters and Ward were so busy last spring that they missed the snakes migrate
across the a nearby gravel road, on their way out of a swamp and up into
the limestone bluffs of Shawnee National Forest. But this year, they hope
to stop and enjoy the pleasures of Longshadow----not just the pots, but
the farm they named for the silhouettes cast by tulip, oak, and hickory
trees."What we're doing here is inspired by nature, by the Prairie school
and the Arts and Crafts movement," Peters says."We're producing pieces
that work in American gardens. This is where we need to be."